FL13 - Page 152

All Thing Riggy
T
hroughout this series
I’ve detailed many
individual rigs that
I’ve had success on
throughout my two
decades of carp fishing, but it doesn’t matter how good
your rig is if the carp are spooked
from the area through bad presentation with the end tackle looped up
and blatantly giving away the whereabouts of that all-important hookbait.
So with this piece I’m going to focus
on what items of end tackle will help
to pin everything to the lakebed and
conceal my presence from my quarry,
thus allowing them to feed much
more confidently, and then the rig can
do its job and get the buzzers screaming.
If we start at the business end and
work back to the rod I should be able
to pinpoint ways of concealing the
whole setup. If you fish a totally flat,
weed-free lake it certainly makes the
job of concealing the tackle ten times
easier. The problems occur when
angling in a typically weedy, up and
down gravel pit. The further away
from the hookbait, the less crucial it
becomes to conceal, but that said if
it’s possible to hide as much as possible, this will allow the fish to swim at
ease in the whole area as opposed to
just around the baited spot. So firstly
we’ll look at pinning down the rig…
How well it sinks naturally will
depend on which rig material we’ve
chosen. Fluorocarbon sinks the best
with braids probably the worst. I still
however roll a wrap of putty around
the middle of the link to help pin it
down, and with the restrictive stiffness of a fluorocarbon it needs to be
cast onto a clear, hard-ish lakebed or
there’s the possibility of it sticking up
obtrusively off the bottom should any
strands of weed be present, or if the
silt is soft and the lead sinks into it,
thus looping the hookbait up. No
amount of putty will lay it flat in this
situation, so if this sort of rig is preferred, it needs to be mounted chod
rig style with the top bead at least the
depth of the silt so the rig can extend
out and lay flat on top of the silt. Any
raised part of the rig will alert the carp
to your presence.
With nylons and coated braids their
buoyancies vary, so it pays to add
putty or the new Korda Sinkers on the
hooklink, quite often in more than one
place, especially on longer hooklinks.
Braids, depending on the tightness of
their weave, can also be of neutral
buoyancy, so I tend to put mouse
dropping sized blobs of putty every 23ins along the hooklink, and it also
pays to rub water into the hooklink
before casting by running the wet
hooklength through your fingers. This
saturates the braid and eliminates
tiny air bubbles forming on the rig,
which make it more buoyant than
required.
That’s the rig pinned down, and
(Top) The spot I took Clover from.
(Left) A heli setup with a stiff link is
advantageous in silt.
(Centre left) Sinkers and putty pin the
more neutral links down.
(Right) Extra putty helps pin even
fluorocarbon down.
Right
FREE LINE 149

FL13 - Page 152

All Thing Riggy
T
hroughout this series
I’ve detailed many
individual rigs that
I’ve had success on
throughout my two
decades of carp fishing, but it doesn’t matter how good
your rig is if the carp are spooked
from the area through bad presentation with the end tackle looped up
and blatantly giving away the whereabouts of that all-important hookbait.
So with this piece I’m going to focus
on what items of end tackle will help
to pin everything to the lakebed and
conceal my presence from my quarry,
thus allowing them to feed much
more confidently, and then the rig can
do its job and get the buzzers screaming.
If we start at the business end and
work back to the rod I should be able
to pinpoint ways of concealing the
whole setup. If you fish a totally flat,
weed-free lake it certainly makes the
job of concealing the tackle ten times
easier. The problems occur when
angling in a typically weedy, up and
down gravel pit. The further away
from the hookbait, the less crucial it
becomes to conceal, but that said if
it’s possible to hide as much as possible, this will allow the fish to swim at
ease in the whole area as opposed to
just around the baited spot. So firstly
we’ll look at pinning down the rig…
How well it sinks naturally will
depend on which rig material we’ve
chosen. Fluorocarbon sinks the best
with braids probably the worst. I still
however roll a wrap of putty around
the middle of the link to help pin it
down, and with the restrictive stiffness of a fluorocarbon it needs to be
cast onto a clear, hard-ish lakebed or
there’s the possibility of it sticking up
obtrusively off the bottom should any
strands of weed be present, or if the
silt is soft and the lead sinks into it,
thus looping the hookbait up. No
amount of putty will lay it flat in this
situation, so if this sort of rig is preferred, it needs to be mounted chod
rig style with the top bead at least the
depth of the silt so the rig can extend
out and lay flat on top of the silt. Any
raised part of the rig will alert the carp
to your presence.
With nylons and coated braids their
buoyancies vary, so it pays to add
putty or the new Korda Sinkers on the
hooklink, quite often in more than one
place, especially on longer hooklinks.
Braids, depending on the tightness of
their weave, can also be of neutral
buoyancy, so I tend to put mouse
dropping sized blobs of putty every 23ins along the hooklink, and it also
pays to rub water into the hooklink
before casting by running the wet
hooklength through your fingers. This
saturates the braid and eliminates
tiny air bubbles forming on the rig,
which make it more buoyant than
required.
That’s the rig pinned down, and
(Top) The spot I took Clover from.
(Left) A heli setup with a stiff link is
advantageous in silt.
(Centre left) Sinkers and putty pin the
more neutral links down.
(Right) Extra putty helps pin even
fluorocarbon down.
Right
FREE LINE 149